In this article we’ve compiled some key quotes, stats, and otherwise tweetable highlights from the event.

Keynote: The transformation of search

First we heard from Carolyn Shelby, SEO Manager, Audience Development at the Walt Disney Company / ESPN.

One of the key quotes from her session was “The trick is to understand the psychology of people. Get in front of the consumer. That’s where search engines are going. What is the least amount of thinking that I can make a consumer do? How can I get them what they want the fastest?”

"The trick is to understand the psychology of people. Get in front of the consumer. That’s where search engines are going. What is the least amount of thinking that I can make a consumer do? How can I get them what they want the fastest?"@cshel at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

She also walked us through a brief SERP evolution, from collecting and organizing, to scoring / ranking relevancy, to now delivering immediate gratification.

A SERP evolution, from:

– Collect and organize
– Score / rank relevancy
– Deliver immediate gratification@cshel from Disney / ESPN kicks off #TSS2019 ! pic.twitter.com/L7FpU9THAJ

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

The future of search is visual

Next up we heard from Michael Akkerman of Pinterest on the growth of visual search and its role in the future.

He talked about the evolution of consumer expectations, from physical stores, to digital convenience, to omnichannel promise, to the inspired shopping of today.

Where it once may have seemed that consumers were only focused on convenience, we’re now seeing the re-emergence of shopping and discovery in the consumer experience.

Evolution of consumer expectations:

-> Physical stores
-> Digital convenience
-> Omnichannel promise
-> Today == Inspired shopping@Mike_Akka of @Pinterest on how shopping / discovery are re-emerging in the consumer experience#TSS2019 pic.twitter.com/iegoYfLCn4

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

He also talked about the role of Pinterest in consumer discovery. On Pinterest, he says, they have billions of text-based searches every month. Of those, 90% are non-brand searches. “People don’t know what they want,” he says. For brands looking to focus on the discovery portion of the consumer journey, Pinterest could be a great option.

"We have billions of text-based searches every month, and 90% of them don’t have a brand qualifier yet — people don’t know what they want."@Mike_Akka on the potential to be found on @Pinterest #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Michael was joined on stage by Dave Fall, CEO of BrandNetworks. They did a Q&A about what brands can do to get started with visual search.

For many brands, they said, it can feel like there’s a big barrier of entry or that it has to be a huge undertaking. But, they noted, remember that your brand does have visual assets already — think about what you use for your website, display ads, Amazon product listings, etc. Consider how you can re-purpose those to get started.

Advice on getting started on #visualsearch?

"I would say just start. Sometimes the barrier to entry is going from text to visual. But your brand has visual assets: website, display, Amazon. Collect that and think about how you can reuse it."@Mike_Akka & @davefall #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

What DTCs and legacy brands can learn from each other 

Next we heard from Kerry Curran of Catalyst (GroupM). She talked about what brands can do to flip their performance marketing mindsets.

One particularly interesting finding she shared was that in campaigns, when brands communicate like a human, it can improve conversion by 900%.

"Communicating like a human increases campaign conversion by 900%."@KSCdigitalpulse from @CatalystSEM on what #DTC brands can do to flip their performance marketing mindset.#TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

She also noted that in the US, women over age 50 have $15 trillion in buying power. For many marketers, it might seem like younger generations have more appeal — but older generations have deeper pockets.

"Women over 50 in the US have $15 trillion in buying power. Yes the younger generations might seem to have more appeal, but how can you expand into audiences with deeper pockets?"@KSCdigitalpulse from @CatalystSEM at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Embarking on a search transformation project

After this, we had a panel discussion on “embarking on a search transformation project.”

The panel included experts from Conde Nast, Microsoft, Mindshare, Volvo, and McKinsey.

John Shehata from Conde Nast shared some work they did to refresh and consolidate older content in order to boost keyword visibility by up to 1000%.

The challenge, as he pointed out, is that 90% of online content was created in the last two years, and 90% of that content gets no traffic. And, 50% of searches on Google end in no clicks. To face that, his team is working on taking past content, consolidating multiple pieces, and focusing on making each piece amazing.

90% of content online created in last two years
90% of that content gets no traffic
50% of searches on Google get no clicks

What can we do about this?@JShehata from @CondeNast on how they refresh / consolidate older content to boost keyword visibility by up to 1000%#TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Noel Reilly of Microsoft also touched on the speed at which new content is created. She encouraged marketers to think more broadly about what people want and are looking to discover. At Microsoft Ads, she said, 18% of queries each month are new queries.

When inputs are continuing to change so much, she recommended marketers really look at their search query reports to build content around those.

"At Microsoft Ads, 18% of queries each month are new queries.

Inputs are changing so much, you need to broaden your thinking to discover what people want.

Look at your search query reports, build your content around that."@Noooel from @Microsoft at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

John Shehata of Conde Nast also spoke a bit about what they’re doing to prepare for voice search. Overall, he’s adopting a more conservative approach: investing a little, getting the foundation ready, and waiting for more clarity before diving into larger scale investment.

He likened the current discussion of voice search to the conversation about mobile a decade ago: “Remember when we said ‘mobile is here’ for ten years? But then it took ten years.”

"Remember when we said “mobile is here” for 10 years? But then it took 10 years.

Be ready for voice search, invest a little bit. Beyond that, there's not much we can do yet on a big scale. Have the foundation ready, wait for more clarity."@JShehata on #voicesearch at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

And to wrap up from this session, we heard another great point from Noel of Microsoft: “The most successful brands I see are the ones putting people at the center of their advertising. Regardless of what the next big thing is in search, your job as a marketer is to understand your customer.”

"The most successful brands I see are the ones putting people at the center of their advertising. Regardless of what the next big thing is in search, your job as a marketer is to understand your customer."@Noooel from @Microsoft at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Amazon search

Next we heard from John Denny with some interesting statistics and expert tips on Amazon search.

When it comes to how different generations search, he revealed that 52% of Gen Z named Amazon as their favorite site for shopping. The number two spot went to Nike, who claimed just 4% of votes — putting Amazon at 13 times that.

What are Gen Z’s favorite sites for shopping?

Amazon took the #1 spot with 52%

13x higher than the #2 spot — Nike at just 4%@johnhdenny on the latest in #AmazonAdvertising#TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

He also discussed three of the main options CPG brands have for driving purchases / traffic: a brand’s own website, a brand’s detail page on Amazon, and in-store traffic.

For the largest 100 CPG brands out there, he said, there was five times more traffic on the Amazon detail page plus in-store than there was on the brand’s own website.

His message: for brands not on Amazon, might be time to consider it.

Of the 100 largest CPG brands out there, between
1. Brand website
2. Brand detail page on Amazon
3. In-store traffic

There was 5x more traffic on the Amazon detail page + in-store than there was on the brand’s own website.@johnhdenny at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Optimizing for voice search

Next, we heard another panel, this time specifically on voice search, from Mastercard, Synup, and Advantix Digital.

While earlier in the day we heard a more cautious perspective from Conde Nast, this panel was a bit more bullish on voice search.

Synup CEO Ashwin Ramesh gave one interesting rationale around the rapid adoption of voice search globally in countries like India, Indonesia, and parts of Southeast Asia. In India, he says, 50% of all searches are already done via voice. “They’re leapfrogging markets,” he said. He also gave the personal example that his grandmother — she doesn’t type and has never used a computer, but she sends him voice messages via her iPad.

"In India, 50% of all searches are voice.

Countries like India, Indonesia, SE Asia — they’re leapfrogging markets.

My grandmother doesn’t type, she’s never used a computer. She sends me voice messages via her iPad."@ashwin_ramesh of @synup at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Paradigm shifts in search

After this we heard from Stephen Kraus, Head of Digital Insights at Jumpshot. He shared many interesting statistics about the current state of the search industry and how it’s shifting.

90% of all search happens on Google, he says, and it skews branded (unlike on Pinterest). Of the top ten most used search terms on Google in the past couple months, seven are brands: Google, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Walmart, Craigslist, and BMW.

The other three, interestingly, were “you,” “weather,” and “news.”

Top searches on Google in past couple months (total volume):

– 7/10 are brands
– Others are "you," "weather," and "news"@stephenkraussf from @jumpshotinc at #TSS2019 pic.twitter.com/CZbz8L8Z9H

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

While 90% of all search happens on Google, when it comes to product-related search, 54% happens on Amazon.

54% of product-related searches happen on Amazon. @stephenkraussf from @jumpshotinc at #TSS2019

— Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) October 25, 2019

Stay tuned for part two with highlights from the afternoon sessions, as well as some deep dives into specific insights!

In fact, there are now more than one billion voice searches per month, and this number will only rise over the coming years.

But just how big an impact is voice having on search in real terms? What are the specific strategies brands need to apply to avail of this trend?

This is another topic we’re excited to learn more about next week at the Transformation of Search Summit here in New York.

One of the experts we’ll be hearing from is Guillaume Conteville, SVP of Global Digital Marketing at Mastercard.

Guillaume will be part of the panel titled “Optimizing for position 0: Everything you need to know about Voice Search.”

1. What are your key priorities over the next twelve months?

In my role I’ll be focusing on driving change in the way we do marketing to adapt to new usage, and to leverage technology and data to their maximum potential.

The hot topics for us at the moment are CX, Voice, AR, marketing automation, and data-based customization.

2. What is your biggest challenge in achieving those?

Prioritization and execution.

There are so many potential initiatives you could start, identifying the real game-changing ones is always tricky.

Then, like always with tech-based projects, executing on your vision is always more complex than anticipated.

3. What’s your advice to others who may be facing similar challenges?

You really need to establish a broad climate of trust among all stakeholders, in order to have a real test-and-learn approach.

In adtech, it’s impossible to get it right the first time.

Success always come after a lot of optimizing and fine tuning.

4. What’s an interesting trend you’re seeing in the market right now?

It’s not search-related, but it’s fascinating to see how the changes that web browsers have made in regard to third-party cookies are having a massive impact on the whole adtech ecosystem.

The end of third-party cookie tracking will potentially be more disruptive than regulation.

5. Tell us a bit about your session at the Search Summit?

In this session, I’ll be sharing about the journey we’re going through at Mastercard to future-proof our content and ensure its discoverability in a future where people increasingly interact with machines through voice.

6. What are you looking forward to most at the Summit?

This is a unique opportunity for me to learn more about latest developments around search.

7. What’s something you do every day that helps you be more successful or productive?

It might sound cliché but, in this type of role, keeping a learning mindset is absolutely key. So every day I make sure to put some time toward talking to a lot of people and doing a lot of reading.

Siddharth has grown his career in marketing at various companies, including spending the past 11 years at SAP.

For many search marketers, embarking on search transformation projects can seem daunting and unclear. Siddharth’s expertise lies in leading marketing transformation efforts, and he’ll share insights on what’s he’s learned along the way.

Tell us a bit about your role at SAP?

I serve as head of SAP Global Partner Ecosystem and SME Marketing. In this role, I oversee SAP’s entire global partner ecosystem – with nearly 20,000 partners – including companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Deloitte. We also market to the invaluable small and midsize space. My team is responsible for providing excellent support and resources for existing partners and helping to grow the network with new partners.

What are your key priorities over the next twelve months?

My key priorities over the next 12 months will include supporting SAP revenue and growth aspirations through innovative partner marketing, communications, and enablement. We will continue to be laser-focused on creating great partner experiences, extending the company’s reach to more customers, and driving SAP brand value.

What is your biggest challenge in achieving those?

Our biggest challenge is to make sure that we stay focused and look at the big picture. We are a large team within a large, global company. The path to success comprises many components that must come together in a cohesive manner.

What’s your advice to others who may be facing similar challenges?

As with many areas in life, communication and collaboration is key. Everyone on the team needs to be on the same page when it comes to understanding the plan, the strategy, and the goals. More importantly, the communication has to be a two-way street. It is vital to establish a culture in which people feel comfortable asking questions and providing feedback.

What’s an interesting trend you’re seeing in the market right now?

It is interesting to see the growth of AI and how it is becoming more and more sophisticated. AI is providing unprecedented personalization, which makes for memorable customer experiences. When it comes to search specifically, AI is helping to make it easier to find the information you need faster and with more accuracy than ever before.

How do you expect it will change in the next 6-12 months?

The rate at which AI is evolving is truly astronomical. By its very nature, AI gets better with time. With more data and new algorithms over the next several months, accuracy will continue to improve and forecasting and anticipating customer needs will become even more precise.

Tell us a bit about your session at the Search Summit?

I am excited to be a part of the panel discussion, “Embarking on a Search Transformation Project.” It is crucial for companies to not only incorporate search into their overall martech strategy; they must continue to evolve their search strategy to include new search technology. Search needs to be a core part of every marketing strategy and tactics.

What are you looking forward to most at the Summit?

I enjoyed being a part of the Summit as the keynote speaker last year, and I am looking forward to sharing ideas around the fascinating topic of search. Search is such an important topic to all industries, and the Summit will provide an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest developments within this field.

What’s one of your favorite search technologies and why?

I have been following the development of voice search for quite some time now. It is my favorite search technology because it has come so far in such a short amount of time. Additionally, it’s an engaging, convenient, and fun way to obtain information!

What’s something you do every day that helps you be more successful or productive?

I am a voracious reader. Every time I take a break from a meeting or a call I try to read something new or interesting that expands my horizons. I also love to learn new things — so whenever I am in a meeting I often have a lot of questions.

Thanks Siddharth for the insights, and looking forward to learning more at the event.

Hope to see you all there!

She’ll be giving a session called, “Optimizing for the world’s second largest search engine: YouTube.”

Courtney has built her career in search engine optimization, including previous roles as Global SEO Specialist at Anthropologie and SEM & SEO Specialist at Nasty Gal.

YouTube and video optimization are topics a lot of us are keen to learn a lot more about. There are more than 1.9 billion people who use YouTube every month, and people are spending over a billion hours watching videos every day on the platform. Video traffic as a whole is predicted to account for 75% of all mobile traffic by 2020. There is a big opportunity for brands, publishers and video creators to expand their reach.

Tell us about your role at goop?

I manage ecommerce and SEO at goop. I match user intent to quality products and services via search (both on and off site), YouTube, and our website’s marketing and merchandising placements on the homepage and category pages.

What are your key priorities over the next twelve months?

Goop is in the process of launching a new contextual commerce experience to better meet the needs of users who are reading and shopping on our website.

We first want to meet users’ informational intent by delivering educational content across their topics of interest. Once informational intent has been met, we also want to deliver on their transactional intent by featuring compelling products in the appropriate site placements.

Another priority is improving site speed. With Google’s mobile first index, site speed has become increasingly important.

What’s an interesting trend you’re seeing in the market right now?

The rise of zero-click searches on Google. Targeting featured snippets has become increasingly important.

How do you expect it will change in the next 6-12 months?

I anticipate that the percentage of zero-click searches will continue to rise in the next 6-12 months. With this, I anticipate heightened awareness of this trend driven by Sparktoro and other sources. Advertisers and SEOs will become more focused on On-SERP SEO and featured snippet targeting.

Tell us a bit about your session at the Search Summit?

I’ll be providing an overview on how YouTube search intent differs from Google search intent and how to develop a YouTube strategy accordingly.

Along with this, I’ll give actionable advice on goal setting, KPIs to optimize for, key ranking factors, ways to drive visibility to your channel, and recommended tools to use. 

What are you looking forward to most at the Summit?

As much as I’m looking forward to the sessions, I am most excited for the networking aspect! I’m constantly driving my (non-search industry) friends crazy discussing SEO trends and strategy   

What’s one of your favorite search technologies and why?

GTMetrix for site speed tracking. This tool provides actionable recommendations for enhancing site speed and performance. 

What’s something you do every day that helps you be more successful or productive?

My morning routine is everything. I wake up early, work out, listen to a podcast or new music, drink cold brew and do my skincare routine. I’ve never been one to roll out of bed and head straight to work — I need to linger in my personal life a bit first. 

Ps — You can check out goop’s YouTube channel here.

Hope to see you at the event!

Amine Bentahar is the Chief Digital and Operating Officer at Advantix Digital. He’s also an author and member of the Forbes Agency Council.

Amine’s session will be about “Optimizing for position 0: Everything you need to know about voice search.”

Tell us about your current work

Amine Bentahar: I’m the Chief Digital & Operating Officer at Advantix Digital. I’m in charge of operations and ensuring that we are delivering the best quality work and exceptional results for our clients.

I’m also responsible for the overall digital and marketing strategy for many of our key clients which includes publicly traded companies, companies backed by major VC and PE firms, and mid-sized companies from various industries. 

What are your key priorities over the next twelve months?

AB: Implement a voice search strategy for all of our B2C and B2B clients, and continue to leverage voice search as a channel to drive new customer acquisitions for our clients. 

What is your biggest challenge in achieving those?

AB: Most companies haven’t allocated a budget specific to just voice search, and aren’t taking the time to truly understand how their customers are either looking for information or shopping through voice.

Because of this, we are having to spend a lot of time educating companies about the importance of having a voice search strategy and budget. 

What’s your advice to others who may be facing similar challenges?

AB: Educate your teams or clients on voice search and how it’s changing the way customers are shopping or looking for information. 

What’s an interesting trend you’re seeing in the market right now?

AB: The integration of voice search technology in cars, TVs, appliances and other devices. 

How do you expect it will change in the next 6-12 months?

AB: With all the money being invested in R&D by the big players (Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft), I would expect to see this trend to continue growing, and for voice search technology to be available on even more devices. 

Tell us a bit about your session at the Search Summit?

AB: My session will be about optimizing for voice search and more specifically about the steps companies must take to rank for position 0. We will help attendees understand how voice search works and how to develop organic content to be “read” by Alexa or Google Home. 

What are you looking forward to most at the Summit?

AB: I’m looking forward to meeting other thought leaders and marketers and learning from their experiences about things that are disrupting the search world. 

What’s one of your favorite search technologies and why?

AB: Voice search as I find it somewhat amazing especially when you see the fast adoption rate of the technology and how it’s impacting the way customers are now searching. 

What’s something you do every day that helps you be more successful or productive?

AB: I do my best to exercise everyday and also I take at least 30 minutes of my day to read either about marketing or management. 

We caught up with Moz’s Sarah Bird and Rob Bucci to learn about what they’ve been working on and trends they’re seeing in SEO. Sarah is CEO of Moz and has been at the company since joining as the eighth employee in 2007. She’s helped grow the company from a few hundred customers to now more than 37,000. Sarah holds a J.D. and previously worked as an attorney before getting into the startup space.

Rob is VP of R&D at Moz. He previously was CEO of STAT Search Analytics, which he helped build since 2011 and which was acquired by Moz in October 2018. 

Their company is headquartered in Seattle, where Sarah is based, and they also have a large office in Vancouver, where Rob is based.

In this conversation, we focus mostly on Moz’s interest in and work on local search, as well as better understanding queries the way that Google understands them.

SEW: Tell us about what you’ve been working on lately around local search?

Sarah: We’re really excited — we think this is the golden age of search. More people are searching than ever before, and they have more devices and opportunities to use when searching. That’s come also with changes at Google of not wanting to just be a portal or a gateway to websites, but to actually allow users to transact and interact right there on Google property. Google is more of a destination now and not just a gateway.

What we’ve noticed is that while we may have more searches than ever before, not all those searches are created equal. Some searches are simply not commercizable anymore for anyone but Google. But we think you still have some great opportunities, particularly in the local space.

Research coming out from Google, others, and our own internal research is really showing that local intent searches lead to a purchase much more quickly.

And it’s hyper-local. You can get a different search result on one street corner, then walk four blocks and get a different search result on that corner. It means that more people can actually play the search game. There’s much more SEO opportunity in local.l

A big theme at Moz right now is focusing on making local search more understood and easier to do for SEOs.

Rob: In today’s Google, there’s really, for the vast majority of queries, no such thing as a national SERP anymore. Everything is local. Google gets a lot of local signals, especially from mobile devices. And the mobile device doesn’t say “I’m searching from the U.S.,” it says “I’m searching from the corner of 5th avenue and Tucker Street.” Google takes that information and uses it to create a SERP that has all sorts of content relevant to that specific local area. 

We’ve been helping our users adapt to that reality by building out a set of functionality that we call Local Market Analytics. It allows users to get actual, on-the-ground reality that a searcher would see in the area where they’re searching.

Part of how we do that is by sampling within a given market. Let’s say a market is Toronto, San Francisco, or Seattle. Local Market Analytics would sample from several different zip codes within that market to pull out an average rank or average appearance on that SERP. So truly, this is the actual appearance in that market.

We have studies that have shown that even for sites that don’t have brick-and-mortar locations, their performance varies dramatically depending on where their searcher or their customer is searching from. 

We hope that this functionality better allows our users to adapt to this new reality and make sure they can have the right data to build the foundation of their strategies.

Moz Local vs Local Market Analytics

Sarah: We at Moz are dedicated to local search because we know it’s so commercializable and because we know there’s so much organic opportunity. Because it’s so hyper-local and focused, there are some really interesting ways of thinking when you view local search.

We’ve relaunched our Moz Local product. The new Moz Local allows you to do even more than the prior version. We’re enabling, even more, review management which is super important for search right now, as well as more Google posts and more subtle GMB management. Moz Local is separate from Local Market Analytics, and there’s a good reason for that.

With the new Moz Local, you really need to have a physical location in order for it to be valuable.

But Local Market Analytics doesn’t require you to have a physical location. It just requires that the kind of queries that you care about will vary by location.

Rob: For local SEOs, the spectrum of things that they care about is varied. On one hand, they’ll care about the appearance of their business’s local listings — the accuracy of that data, review management, and having the right distribution partners for those listings. Moz Local, especially the new version that we’ve launched, handles that side of the equation very well.

Where we believe the market has been traditionally underserved has to do with the performance of a website itself in organic search results. As those organic search results get increasingly hyper-local, we’ve found that local SEOs have been underserved with the quality of data they’ve had in order to build their local strategies.

Local Market Analytics seeks to solve that part of the problem: performance of their websites in hyper-local organic search.

What kind of feedback have you gotten about the tool so far?

Rob: There’s a ton of excitement. We talked about this at MozCon, and it really resonated with people: this idea that “Yes, I search from my phone all the time and see a lot of local results, even when I’m not looking for a local business, and I see my search change.” Or agencies that have customers in three different areas and they’re asking why the rankings they’re sending aren’t the same as what their clients are seeing, because they’re impacted by local.

I think a lot of people intuitively understand that this is where Google is. Google is by nature right now intensely hyper-local. So there’s a great hunger for this kind of data. Historically, people have thought they just couldn’t get it.

A lot of times people get accustomed to the idea that we can’t get what we need from Google — that the data just isn’t available. 

So when we’re able to show them that the data actually is available, and that we’ve built functionality around it, there’s a lot of excitement.

Local Search Volume: New functionality

We also rolled out our new Local Search Volume functionality. It’s a brand-new data point that people traditionally haven’t been able to get. 

Most products on the market can tell you “search volume in the U.S. is X and in Germany it’s Y.” That’s very broad — nationwide. But when we care about tracking the market of Toronto or San Fran or Memphis, we want to know what our search volume is in that city. People have traditionally thought that they couldn’t get that data, but we’ve now made it available, and we’re really excited about that.

Right now, we’re doing it on a city basis, and we’ve rolled it out to states. I don’t want to over-promise. I would love to have it be more specific, and that’s certainly something that we’re thinking about.

What’s going to be really cool is when we can get to a place where we help people understand demand per capita in their markets. 

Let’s take an example. We might think that Brooklyn is the epicenter of pizza. But when we actually look at New Hampshire and the number of searches there versus how many people are in that market, we might find that the demand per capita for pizza is greater in New Hampshire than in Brooklyn.

Being able to show people if there’s a big untapped opportunity — I’m really looking forward to empowering that kind of analysis.

Sarah: This ties into what I alluded to before – we need to understand queries and types of search results like Google does. Search results vary dramatically nowadays, with all kinds of SERP features. All of this impacts whether there’s a click at all, and certainly the clickthrough rate.

We are doing a bunch of R&D right now to make sure that we can help our audience of SEOs understand queries like Google, and also understand what a search result might look like for a kind of query, and what impact that could have on CTR. This stuff is more in the R&D territory. Local Search Volume is part of that interest and investment on our part.

When it comes to the distribution of clicks between organic, paid, and no-click searches, some people see the rise of paid and no-click searches as disheartening. You sound optimistic. What’s your response to those trends?

Sarah: Absolutely for some part of searches happening, if you’re not Google you can’t take advantage of it. The value stays with Google — that is absolutely true. But the overall number of searches continues to rise — that’s also a trend. 

And I believe very strongly that just because there isn’t a click doesn’t mean there isn’t some value created. 

We have these old ways of thinking about whether or not you’re successful in SEO. Those ways are deeply entrenched, but we need to let go of them a bit. Traffic to your website is no longer an accurate measure of the value you’re getting from search. It might be a minimum — that’s at least the value you’re getting. But it’s nowhere near the maximum. 

I think that brand marketers, who come from different disciplines, have always known that visibility — how you show up and how compelling it is — that those things matter, even if you can’t measure it like old-school SEO or PPC.

There’s a danger in equating an increase in no-click searches with a decrease in the value of SEO. 

We should shift our attention to not just “am I showing up” and “am I getting traffic,” but “how am I showing up in search results?” 

What does it look like when someone lands on your search result? Are they getting a phone number? Are they getting what they want, the answer they need? Is your search result compelling? 

That’s part of what’s driving our interest in thinking more holistically about what a search result looks like and feels like, and how users interact with it. We want to know more about how you’re showing up and how Google thinks about queries.

Those two concepts: How does Google understand queries, and what does a search result look like, feel like, and how does the searcher experience it — those are related.

Rob: There’s still a ton of value out there, especially just for building a sense of credibility and brand authority. 

We live in a world, right now at least, where we’ll continue to see Google chipping away at these opportunities. They’re a business and they’re trying to maximize shareholder value. They have a natural inclination to grab as much as they can. 

We shouldn’t get despondent because of that. There’s still a lot of value there. Even with no-click SEO, you can still deliver a lot of brand authority. 

What are other trends that SEOs should be paying attention to?

Rob: One of the other areas we’re thinking about is how do we better help our customers think about queries in the same way Google thinks about queries? 

Google goes a lot deeper than just understanding which words mean what. They look at the intent of the searcher — what are they trying to solve? We’re really interested in helping people think about queries in that way.

We have some really interesting R&D work right now around intent and understanding what Google thinks an intent is. How can our users use that information to adapt their content strategies? That’s an area that’s really ripe and that people in the industry should be paying attention to. It’s not going anywhere. I’m really excited about that.

How do you go about understanding how Google understands intent?

Rob: Without getting too deep into it, there’s a number of ways that one could do it. One might be inclined to look at the NLP (natural language processing) approach — what might these words mean when used together and what might they say about the state of mind of the searcher? That’s a viable approach rooted in NLP and ML (machine learning).

Another approach might be to look at the SERP itself. Google has already decided what it is. I can look at what Google’s decided the signals are to what the intent is. Both of these are approaches one might use.

SEO is an ever-changing industry. What skills should people be focused on developing or learning about in the next few months?

Sarah: From a skills perspective, this is what I’ve always loved about SEO and what makes it challenging to be great at, but something that’s critical nonetheless — it’s a great blend of art and science. 

You have to be technical, but you also have to be able to put your mind into the user. Or rather, you have to be able to think about what Google will think about what the user thinks. 

What could the ultimate user be trying to accomplish, and how will Google follow that? 

You also have to have a strong technical foundation, so you know how to go out and execute. But those aren’t necessarily new skills.

Rob: I think people always look for what’s new, but sometimes we overlook the basic fundamentals which never go out of style. It’s about reaffirming what’s really important. 

There are two basic skills I think all SEOs need:

1. You need to be able to interpret data. You need to be able to look at a bunch of disparate data points and weave them together into a narrative. What is it telling you? In doing that, people need to get really good at overcoming their own self-serving biases about interpreting data in a way that’s convenient or how they think the world should line up. The ability to interpret data is critical to an SEO who’s going to succeed at finding new opportunities that no one else has spotted.
2. Understanding how to talk to people in a way that will get them to do what you want them to do. That really comes down to understanding how your content should be optimized and what you should be saying on your pages. What problem are you trying to solve for them and how are you trying to solve it?

Those are good fundamental skills I think people should continue to focus on, rather than thinking about, “I need to learn Python.” That’s a lot of distraction and it’s very specialized. 

Learning Python or R might seem sexy because technical SEO is having a renaissance right now. But at the end of the day, it’s not a basic skill you need to succeed in SEO.

SEO is a broad career and discipline. If you find yourself in a role that requires you to know that stuff, great. But I wouldn’t make that sweeping advice to the entire SEO industry because I think it’s a bit of a distraction.

Thanks so much to Sarah and Rob for talking with us!

Ps — They’re running a pilot program for their Local Market Analytics tool. It’s invite-only but anyone can register interest to be selected. They’re quite excited about it and would love feedback from the industry.

As a prelude to the event, we’re doing a series of Q&As with speakers and panelists. First up, we have Noël, who will be on the panel, “Embarking on a search transformation project.”

Tell us a bit about your role at Microsoft? 

Noël Reilly: As a Strategic Account Director for Microsoft Advertising, it’s my responsibility to partner with our top global clients and ensure they understand our Microsoft value proposition and how to best leverage Microsoft Advertising products to reach their customers.

My main goal is to help build client relationships and partner with them on digital strategies which empower and grow their business.

What are your key priorities over the next twelve months?

NR: Our Microsoft Advertising offering is evolving quickly — we’ve come out with a ton of solutions, particularly in the audience, automation, and ecommerce space.

My first key priority is of course educating our clients on how best to utilize these tools to drive their goals.

We’re also looking at ways in which to bring a single voice from Microsoft to our clients — I’ve been partnering heavily with the enterprise side of our business to learn more about and deepen the relationship across top clients. 

What is your biggest challenge in achieving those? 

NR: Like all digital advertising, search in particular generates a ton of data, and we as marketers can get overwhelmed by it!

While all of this data we have access to has opened a ton of new possibilities for brands to respond, we also have to make sure we are respecting the people behind that data.

So much is changing in this space right now — with GDPR in Europe to now California following suit, there’s a lot out there to be knowledgeable of.

Add that to the way that search and discovery are changing with things like voice and image, and you’ve got yourself a really complex ecosystem.

Microsoft has taken a people-first approach to all of this. We sometimes get questions from marketers on when we’re coming out with this targeting or that data cut.

And while we are committed to client success, we have taken an industry-leading approach to brand safety and privacy standards and creating solutions that provide value while keeping customer data secure. 

What’s your advice to others who may be facing similar challenges?

NR: Ask questions! If you’re working with a partner who isn’t transparent about where their data comes from, or where your ads are showing up, you should ask why that is.

Automation is a hugely powerful tool for marketers. It can reduce a ton of bandwidth and be a key driver of your digital transformation journey.

Microsoft has tons of new products that can make personalization and automation easier, from product audiences which supercharge your ecommerce remarketing across our network, to automated bidding, to even our handy recommendations tab.

They all use the power of the Microsoft graph which can help you save time and work the way you want to work, but also offer that industry leading transparency and trust I mentioned earlier.

What’s an interesting trend you’re seeing in the market right now?

NR: We have a tendency to focus on the tools: voice search, targeting, and audiences — but those things themselves are not the disruptors.

It’s things like conversational AI, and the new consumer experience, which are what’s interesting.

If you think about search and what it fundamentally has always been: it’s a place to discover and get answers.

This has not changed, but the way consumers engage with it has. And I think marketers are working to figure out the best way to tap into this new ecosystem. 

How do you expect it will change in the next 6-12 months?

NR: I think the focus on designing for every customer experience is what will start to take the spotlight in the next 12 months.

We at Microsoft give you a ton of ways to tap into your consumer. For example, if you want to understand what voice search looks like for your brand, you could run a search query report and look for indicators of voice queries in the intent.

If you want to personalize your message, you can leverage responsive search ads.

But, just using the tools does not guarantee success. The brands who know their customer journeys and are investing in unifying their data are the ones who we see improving their marketing performance.

Tell us a bit about your session at the Search Summit?

NR: My goal is of course to inspire you to not be overwhelmed by all of the changes in the world of search but inspired to put it at the forefront of your marketing strategy — there’s no better way to understand the journey of your consumer.

What are you looking forward to most at the Summit?

NR: I’m obsessed with our clients — I’m really looking forward to hearing from the folks at Walt Disney, Volvo, and Conde Nast.

As someone whose biggest responsibility above all is client satisfaction, I have to know and stay in touch with what is top of mind for clients.

What’s one of your favorite search technologies and why? 

NR: You’re talking to someone who has worked in Search for the last 12 years, so I pretty much nerd out on all of them.

If I have to pick a favorite though, it would definitely be our newly created Audience Ads on the Microsoft Audience Network.

It leverages search and web activity as well as demographic and professional targeting to really allow the advertiser a ton of cool options for targeting, and we’re seeing really great success from our clients who are investing time into this product.

What’s something you do every day that helps you be more successful or productive? 

NR: I am an avid yogi and teach fitness classes outside of work, so this has always been an important part of my life.

I recently moved about an hour and a half outside of the city, so I’ve had to do a lot of adjusting on my time table.

I make sure every morning I use the commute time to answer emails and create my working agenda for the day, so by the time I arrive at the office, I’m ready to hit the ground running.

Things always come up, but I have found that rising early and taking advantage of the quietness of the morning has given me time back to still get things done I need to do while keeping my time in the evenings personal for myself, my family, or my students. 

To see highlights from last year’s event, check out this roundup of the sessions or these presentations.

Transformation of Search Summit 2019 speakers + agenda

We’ve gathered a great list of search marketing pros to share their knowledge and experience at this event.

Carolyn Shelby from the Walt Disney Company will kick off the morning sharing insights from her work as SEO Manager of Audience Development. She’ll explore overarching trends in search and what we can expect to change in the next year. From the shift from search to discovery to the changing balance of paid versus organic, from data concerns to the changing consumer journey, this session will touch on key themes all marketers should keep top of mind.

Michael Akkerman of Pinterest will follow with Dave Fall of BrandNetworks in a session titled “You’ll Know it When You See it: The Future of Ecommerce is Visual.” Together, they’ll discuss how marketers can inspire consumers and bring magic back to sometimes impersonal online experiences. What options exist for brands looking to create more visual discovery of their products and services?

Courtney Messerli of Goop will give expertise on optimizing for YouTube. As the second largest search engine with more than 1.9 billion monthly users, YouTube offers a huge opportunity for brands to expand their reach. She’ll give insight on video optimization as well as expectations for the role of video in the future of search.

Other speakers include:

• John Shehata, VP of Audience Development Strategy at Conde Nast
• Noël Reilly, Strategic Account Director at Microsoft
• Guillaume Conteville, SVP, Global Digital Marketing at Mastercard
• John Denny, VP Ecommerce & Digital Marketing at CAVU Venture Partners
• Allen Hammock, Global Strategist for Search at Kenshoo
• Kerry Curran, Managing Partner, Marketing Integration, Catalyst (GroupM)
• Stephen Kraus, Head of Digital Insights at Jumpshot

Why should you attend this event?

What makes the Transformation of Search Summit special, you ask?

By attending this event, you’ll be able to:

• Connect with 350+ senior search, digital, and ecommerce marketers from global brands
• Hear from renowned experts from across the industry
• Participate in an unparalleled, unique platform to dissect the current landscape
• Be immersed into a strategic deep-dive into the future of search marketing
• Share actionable search tactics on how you can capitalize on and protect your business from digital advances
• Collaborate with your peers about where the industry predicts search is heading
• Take away real insights designed to address your business needs

Last year, 59% of attendees were business leaders (C-level, partner, VP) and directors from across four continents.

To view a sample of this year’s delegate list, see here.

Who should attend?

We’ve designed this event to be equal parts strategic and tactical, designed for senior leaders as well as practitioners.

This might include:

• C-suite leaders looking to understand the changing role that search plays within their organizations
• Head/Director/SVP/VP of Marketing looking to understand the changing role of search in customers’ paths to purchase, impact of technologies on performance, spend, ROI, budgeting, etc.
• Head/Director/SVP/VP of Search/SEO/PPC looking to understand the impact of new technologies and consumer trends on how to best evolve their search marketing strategies

Industries represented span publishing, retail/ecommerce, SaaS, agencies, consultancies, financial services, and more.

Last year saw attendees from brands including Amazon, Sprint, Adobe, L’Oreal, Yext, KPMG, J.P. Morgan, Xerox, Bloomberg, and Wunderman, among many others:

When / where?

This one-day event will take place at a lovely venue called Convene, located in Midtown Manhattan at 46th St and 6th Ave.

Sessions will run from 9am to 5pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Lunch, snacks, coffee, etc. will be served throughout the day.

Thank you to our partners

This event wouldn’t be what it is without the support of our partners:

• Catalyst
• Fospha
• Kenshoo
• Jumpshot
• SEOClarity
• Synup

And we’d like to extend a big thank you to each of them.

Where can I learn more about the event?

To see a full rundown of agenda, speakers, sponsors, and tickets, check out the Transformation of Search Summit website.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Our speaker for the evening was Steve Kraus, Jumpshot’s Head of Digital Insights. Steve has been at Jumpshot since November 2018, and previously held roles including Chief of Insights at SimilarWeb and SVP and Chief Insights Officer at Ipsos. He did a PhD at Harvard in social psychology, and was also previously a professor. 

He pulled on their data on consumer digital behavior to ask and answer various questions we all have about how consumers are searching and spending online.

Since they work with mostly clickstream data, the numbers in this article refer to desktop and mobile clicks, but exclude in-app actions. (You can read more about their data near the bottom of this article.)

What is Amazon’s market share of US digital transactions?

Steve jumped right in with a question we likely all have asked at one point: How much does Amazon matter in digital transactions?

Many in the audience guessed around a 35-60% share. But in reality, the distribution looks like this:

Amazon averages a 74% share of digital transactions in the US.

On this graph, the Y-axis represents the number of digital transactions and the X-axis shows Amazon’s market share in each. So for a category like electronics, you can see that there is a huge volume of digital transactions, and that Amazon holds maybe 80-85% of that volume. For something like women’s clothing, on the other other hand, both the volume is smaller and Amazon’s market share is smaller — closer to 35% (which we’ll expand on later).

Steve mentioned that it’s quite hard to capture every interaction in the long tail, but the numbers are still a fairly accurate representation of the overall.

The key takeaway?

“Everyone says Amazon is so big, but in reality many of us still underestimate them.”

According to Steve, people maybe aren’t over-hyping Amazon’s dominance (nor Google’s). And they may even be underestimating it.

“Many people guess Amazon’s market share at around 40-50% — but that’s how they perform in their worst categories, like clothing and furniture.”

He expanded on this point, adding that Amazon has 16x the number of transactions of Walmart, and 54x the number of transactions of Target.

“Even though we hear so much in the news about antitrust, Congressional hearings, etc., we still underestimate how big and powerful [these tech giants] really are.”

What percent of searches happen on Google?

Another very popular question: How much of the search market does Google own?

According to Jumpshot’s clickstream data, Google has about 90% of all web searches (desktop and Android phones).

The huge caveat here is that they can’t look at searches that happen via voice search nor inside an app — YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon and others all likely have huge volumes of search activity that’s not factored in. In the below graph, for instance, YouTube appears much smaller than Google Images, and we would assume that’s at least partly because most Google Image searchers use desktop and most YouTube searchers use the app.

We can also see from this graph how overall since January 2016, the volume of desktop searches is declining in all areas (and we would assume that volume is moving to mobile).

This graph shows the same data as above, but with Google removed so that we have a better view of the smaller players.

One interesting point to note here is how much DuckDuckGo is climbing. However, their overall volume remains quite small. They’ve gone from next to nothing up to 300 million searches a month, which is great. But compared to Google’s 60 billion searches a month, they hit just 0.5% of the volume.

What percent of product-related search is on Amazon?

We’ve seen that Google owns the largest share of the search market. But what if we look specifically at product-related search?

Jumpshot found that the positions of Amazon and Google flipped between 2015 and 2018. As shown in the image below, in 2015, Google had 54% of product-related search and Amazon had 46%. In 2018, Amazon had jumped to 54% and Google had fallen to 46%.

The obvious concern here, and one that Steve demonstrated via the Vox headline, is the advantage that Amazon has from all the data collected in those searches. And of course, how little of that data is shared with sellers on Amazon who are made to compete with Amazon’s own product lines.

By simply investigating “What kinds of keywords are people searching for and not converting on?”, Amazon can discover opportunities in the market and fill them in a way their competition can’t. 

The story here, “Amazon made a skin care line based on what users search for” represents an example of the qualms of many sellers, regulators, and consumers.

Which retailers are successful and which are struggling?

In the age of Amazon and Google, which retailers seem to be figuring out how to stay competitive?

Contrary to popular discourse about the “retail apocalypse,” Jumpshot says that many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are doing quite well. Other, newer digital brands are, too — Chewy and Wayfair, for example.

In this chart, we see the distribution of a number of successful and struggling retailers. The y-axis represents the overall number of digital transactions of that brand in 2018, and the x-axis shows the change in their number of digital transactions between 2017 and 2018.

Any names shown in green, therefore, are growing their number of digital transactions. Brands in red are shrinking. 

According to Steve, the retail apocalypse is a “story that’s oversold.” 

On the contrary, he says that “a lot of brands known for their retail presence are figuring out omnichannel.”

What causes certain retailers to succeed while others don’t? According to Steve, part of the reason can be traced to the type of search happening: branded versus utilitarian.

Branded vs. utilitarian searches

There are two very different types of searches happening in the world, says Steve. 

• Branded searches, for the name of a particular brand such as Nike, Bose, or Nintendo
• Utilitarian or unbranded searches, for items such as “phone case,” “mens socks,” and “paper towels”

And as we might expect, Google and Amazon have very distinct roles in these two types of searches. In the graph below, we see search volumes for the top 1000 branded and non-branded keywords. Google’s volume lies on the y-axis and Amazon’s on the x-axis. Items in blue are branded searches, items in orange are unbranded searches. 

Interestingly, both Prime Video and Audible get more search volume on Google than on Amazon (despite the fact that they’re owned by Amazon).

Terms like bluetooth headphones, hard drives, paper towels, and phone cases get very good volumes on both Amazon and Google. 

Noteworthy here is that it’s difficult to distinguish whether or not some of these terms are product-related or knowledge-related. If someone searches for “iphone,” do they want to buy an iPhone, learn about the next iPhone to be released, or get help with the one they already have?

Steve also pointed out that furniture is another interesting category. Wayfair has had so much success in gaining search market share there. But a few years ago, we might have predicted it would be a category Amazon could have dominated: big ticket items where people don’t have strong brand preferences. Surprisingly, Amazon hasn’t done as well there.

If we look specifically at apparel searches, we see they too tend to fall into either branded or utilitarian.

Amazon tends to do well on unbranded products like socks and underwear. Heinz for example might be highly successful on Amazon. Bigger, more well-known brands, on the other hand, tend to see higher traffic on Google. 

In the image below, Jumpshot has noted that “major fashion brands would be in the far upper right.” For example, they say Nike has 11 million searches on Google versus just 250k on Amazon.

To be competitive in this context, Steve says one might ask themselves:

“What search terms are growing and not converting? That’s the real sweet spot of opportunity.”

Organic clicks, paid clicks, and zero clicks

There are three possible actions after a search: organic clicks, paid clicks, or zero clicks.

Another question many of us are asking is, “Which of these, if any, is on the rise?”

In the graph below, we see trends of types of clicks from January 2016 to March 2019. Paid clicks and zero clicks are going up, and organic clicks are going down.

And of course, the whole idea of zero-click searches has a lot of people raising questions.

• What percent of searches on Google result in no click?
• How many people now find what they need from the home page?
• What does it mean for the publishing industry if the content a business creates can provide information to a user without that user ever leaving Google’s site?
• How much more crowded and informative will SERPs become?

Similarly to Amazon, Google has extremely valuable data about searches. It’s arguably in their own business interest not to share it.

How do people go about finding things online?

Discover –> search –> shop –> buy. 

In this image, Jumpshot shows the consumer funnel and how Google and Amazon play dominant roles in the search and shop phases. Of the “search” category, Google has close to 90% of total search volume and Amazon has about 54% of product search volume. Of the “shop” category, Amazon has about a 75% share of transactions across categories.

Interestingly, though, the upper part of the funnel remains a bit more up for grabs. And as Steve points out, it’s a “very hard thing to quantify. We can quantify if you’re searching or shopping, but discovery has less immediate action.”

We might assume that sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are where most of the discovery is happening. And while Facebook perhaps used to be very strong there, they’ve made changes to de-emphasize advertisers and move toward privacy.

On regulation

At one point, an audience member asked Steve about his thoughts on regulation and privacy.

“My own suspicion is that here in the US it won’t happen anytime soon. In the EU yes, it’s already happening. But in the US, it almost seems “un-American” to talk about anti-trust. These are entrepreneurs. They made their own success. Why would we punish them? I don’t see the political will to do that here.”

At the same time, he noted that “you do see Facebook and Google preemptively stepping back from some things to stay out of the way.”

What kind of data is Jumpshot looking at?

Jumpshot works with anonymized, aggregated, clickstream data from about 100 million devices, including desktop, mobile web for android, and app usage. (Note that their app data sits in a separate data set and doesn’t generally show what happens in an app. Rather, it shows if an app is opened, how many times it’s opened, and if a user clicked through to anything else.) 

With clickstream data, Jumpshot can only look at what websites people have visited. They can model age and gender based on those websites, but overall their view is fairly high-level. 

They also calibrate that data against “known sources of truth” such as actual versus predicted visits to a certain website. Based on those known sources of truth, they can develop algorithms to calibrate their numbers to those actual known numbers.

In general, Steve mentioned, their data is most accurate where they have more known sources of truth (such as in the US market).

“When Google and Amazon are so dominant, what does that mean for brands?”

We asked Steve what he found surprising or interesting about these findings, and he named: “in this world where Google and Amazon are so dominant, what does that mean for brands? How do they thrive? How do they make decision of utilitarian vs branded economy? They have to decide which one they’re going to play in. Some brands are strong enough that they’re able to do both.”

He elaborated with the example of Nike. They came out a couple years ago with a high-profile announcement that they would start selling directly on Amazon, which they hadn’t done previously.

Even if a brand isn’t directly selling on Amazon, the likely scenario is that they still have a presence there. Consumers can still go to Amazon, search for Nike, and get served results from resellers and wholesalers. Products may or may not be counterfeit, and sellers may or may not provide good service.

“A brand that’s not on Amazon is basically abdicating their presence on Amazon to lesser people, to these forces of the marketplace that they have no control over,” Steve says.

Nike wanted to have control over that, so they began a complex process of figuring out what and how they were going to sell on Amazon. They obviously wanted to keep their nike.com site, and they happen to be among brands who are strong enough to do so. So they started figuring out what consumers search for on their site versus on Amazon, and what products and prices to offer on each.

For retailers, Steve says, the question is:

“Do you want to work with Amazon, through Amazon, around Amazon? How do you thrive in this digital world where so many aspects of it are these winner-take-all markets?”

An interesting report recently released by Uberall sought to address that exact question. For as much as we talk about the importance of voice search, and even how to optimize for it — are people actually doing it?

In this report, researchers analyzed 73,000 business locations (using the Boston Metro area as their sample set), across 37 different voice search directories, as well as across SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise.

They looked at a number of factors including accuracy of address, business hours, phone number, name, website, and zip code, as well as accuracy across various voice search directories.

In order, this was how they weighted the importance of a listing’s information:

And pictured below are “the 37 most important voice search directories” that they accounted for.

Uberall analysts did note, however, that Google (search + maps), Yelp, and Bing together represent about 90% of the score’s weight.

How ready are businesses for voice search?

The ultimate question. Here, we’ll dive into a few key findings from this report.

1. Over 96% of all business locations fail to list their business information correctly

When looking just at the three primary listings locations (Google, Yelp, Bing), Uberall found that only 3.82% of business locations had no critical errors.

In other words, more than 96% of all business locations failed to list their business information correctly.

Breaking down those 3.82% of perfect business location listings, they were somewhat evenly split across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB, with enterprise having the largest share as one might expect.

2. The four most common types of listing errors

In their analysis, here’s the breakdown of most common types of missing or incorrect information:

• Opening hours: 978,305 errors (almost half of all listings)
• Website: 710,113 errors (almost one-third of all listings)
• Location name: 510,010 errors (almost one-quarter of all listings)
• Street: 421,048 errors (almost one-fifth of all listings)

3. Which types of businesses are most likely to be optimized for voice search?

Industries that were found to be most voice search ready included:

• Dentists
• Health food
• Home improvement
• Criminal attorneys
• Dollar stores

Industries that were found to be least voice search ready included:

• Consumer protection organizations
• Congressional representatives
• Business attorneys
• Art galleries
• Wedding services

Not much surprise on the most-prepared industries relying heavily on people being able to find their physical locations. Perhaps a bit impressed that criminal attorneys landed so high on the list. Surprising that art galleries ranked second to last, but perhaps this helps explain decline in traffic of late.

And as ever, we can be expectedly disappointed by the technological savvy of congressional representatives.

What’s the cost of businesses not being optimized for voice search?

The next question, of course, is: how much should we care? Uberall spent a nice bit of their report discussing statistics about the history of voice search, how much it’s used, and its predicted growth.

Interestingly, they also take a moment to fact check the popular “voice will be 50% of all search by 2020” statistic. Apparently, this was taken from an interview with Andrew Ng (co-founder of Coursera, formerly lead at both Google Brain and Baidu) and was originally referring to the growth of a combined voice and image search, specifically via Baidu in China.

1. On average, adults spend 10x more hours on their phones than they did in 2018

This data was compiled from a number of charts from eMarketer, showing overall increase in digital media use from 2008 to 2017 (and we can imagine is even higher now). Specifically, we see how most all of the growth is driven just from mobile.

The connection here, of course, is that mobile devices are one of the most popular devices for voice search, second only perhaps to smart home devices.

2. About 21% of respondents were using voice search every week

According to this study, 21% of respondents were using voice search every week. 57% of respondents said they never used voice search. And about 14% seem to have tried it once or twice and not looked back.

In general, it seems people are a bit polarized — either it’s a habit or it’s not.

Regardless, 21% is a sizable number of consumers (though we don’t have information about how many of those searches convert to purchases).

And it seems the number is on the rise: the recent report from voicebot.ai showed that smart speaker ownership grew by nearly 40% from 2018 to 2019, among US adults.

Overall, the cost of not being optimized for voice search may not be sky high yet. But at the same time, it’s probably never too soon to get your location listings in order and provide accurate information to consumers.

You might also like:

• Voice search optimization guide: Six steps for 2019
• Yext Brain and the future of conversational AI: Q&A with CMO Jeff Rohrs (ClickZ)
• What can we learn from voice search in 2018?
• How to optimize your local business for voice search
• Voice search and local SEO: How to get started?
• The comprehensive guide to voice search keyword research